LBL smoked fish cakes

Oh man.
I get ideas from watching food tv...Lately, when J works late I have been watching Diners, Drive-ins and Dives...and one place in Maine made fish cakes in a way I had never heard of. With potatoes and salted fish...then they deep fried them...they looked amazing.
My dad catches fresh fish up north where he lives and he and his friends smoke it up sometimes...and it is drop dead fresh and insanely delicious. I love it but there is only so much smoked fish you can have, and J is really not a fish fan, so I usually just nibble away at it...and I got to thinking that I still had half a fillet of smokey deliciousness in my freezer on the way home today...and I decided to Saskatchewanify a US classic in a healthy way: smoked lake fish potato cakes.
So, I boiled up a large potato and once it was soft I fork mashed up the potato with a glug of milk. Then I added about 1/2 t of crushed garlic, pepper, dill and a bit of salt. Then I flaked up the fish  (~1/4c flaked) and added it in and mixed it all up with my hands and added half a beat egg and 2 T bread crumbs to hold it all together.
Then I made the smush into 2 small patties and dipped them in the remaining half egg and coated them with about 1/4 c more bread crumbs and popped them onto a hot nonstick pan with a spray of Pam just to crisp them up on both sides. I could have baked them to crisp them up better....but it was late and I was starving. :)

I nommed them up with some steamed beetroot and carrots and a bit of fresh tartar sauce I whipped up and...oh...MAN. These are delicious...off the hook with flavour. They are so simple...but the smoked fish just filled it with flavour without overpowering things. I am in love.

I definitely need to make these for my dad the next time I am up visiting!

kitchen chemistry

As a scientist and a cook this made me giggle uncontrollably...

apple cottage cheese pancakes

It's a weekend full of deliciousness.
I had cottage cheese to finish up today, so I looked for a way to have it for breakfast and found a recipe for apple cottage cheese pancakes from the Moosewood Cookbook. I've never had a bad things from that so I cooked this up to get about 10 nice sized pancakes (which for the 2 of us pancake pigs is about right!)

2 grated apples
1 c 1% cottage cheese
3 large eggs (or 1/4c egg whites if you're feeling healthy)
2 T maple syrup
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
1/2 t salt
3/4 c flour
2 t baking powder


Whisk up the eggs and add the cottage cheese and stir up. Grate the apple into the wet stuff and stir in the spices. Then toss in the flour and b.p. and mix until just mixed. If it looks too wet add a bit more flour. Then cook in a hot pan and enjoy with maple syrup.
Simple and healthy and REALLY good. Some of the best pancakes I've had in a while and totally different. Kept me full all morning. :)

Chocolate irish cream cupcakes with coffee buttercream

To celebrate J's first episode of Nightdesk I made him what turned out to be my second fave cupcakes ever. Insanely good and so simple. And don't judge by the use of a mix...they are decadent...the icing is the clincher. Don't skip it- puts them over the top to perfect.

1 package super moist yellow cake
1 small package chocolate pudding mix
3 eggs
3/4 cup Irish cream
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/4 c evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Sift together cake and pudding mix. Mix wet ingredients until eggs are fluffy. Add in dry ingredients and mix on medium 2 minutes until smooth. Mixture will be somewhat thick...don't worry. Line a cupcake pan with liners. Fill liners ~ 2/3 full of cupcake mixture. You should get 21 or 22 cupcakes.
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the middle of cupcakes comes out clean. It is hard to tell when they are done. Try not to overbake them.

Cool completely. Frost with coffee buttercream. Devour.

Coffee Buttercream

1 1/2c unsalted butter, room temp.
3 c icing sugar ( plus a few T at the end to adjust texture)
1 1/2 T instant coffee powder
1 1/2 T warm water
1 1/2 T vanilla
3 T baileys
1 T milk

Whip butter a few minutes until fluffy. Whip in sugar 1 c at a time and mix a few min. Slowly add in flavour in in small portions until combined. Adjust sugar if it needs a bit more.
This is the best icing I've had in a while. I'm not really into icing, but this totally makes the cupcakes. Do not skimp out on the icing...you'll thank me :)

Blueberry cornmeal waffles

Wanted some vaguely healthy waffles and some cornmeal...and then decided blueberries would be good too. So i made up a recipe in my head which was crunchy but still light and yummy.

In a big bowl I mixed 1 3/4 c 1% milk + 3 T lemon juice + juice from a small lemon

Once that sat a few minutes to thicken I added:
2 t oil
2 eggs, beaten
3 T agave syrup
~1/4 t salt
Then I stirred in
~2/3 c wild blueberries
(what I had left. Didn't measure, just guestimating)

In a small bowl I mixed:
1 1/2 c flour
1 c cornmeal
2 T baking powder
3/4 t baking soda

I stirred in the dry to the wet until just mixed and then cooked this up in my belgian waffle maker, taking almost 1 c batter per waffle. It made 6 waffles. It was a thinner batter than "normal" from the cornmeal but cooked up nicely with a crunch but not too heavy. I was hoping for more lemony flavour, but it was still yummy with some blueberry yogurt and maple syrup...
Managed to remember a quick blurry (sorry) photo before I devoured my (heh heh) second one...

Red velvet chocolate chip cookies

I finally have the urge to make cookies again after my holiday cookie overdose...and being love day, it's a good excuse to make some cookies for our coworkers so we nibble a few, but not the whole batch.
I hunted valentine and red cookies and got happy when I found these:
Red Velvet chocolate ship cookies from Cooking Classy. Giggedy.

They are amazing...lightly chocolatey and soft and chewy. They aren't as red as the ones in the cooking blog, but they're a reddy brown like good red velvety things should be. I added less chocolate chips simply because I didn't have enough and I like them the way they are...remind me a lot of my mum's chocolate chip cookies...it took all I had to not eat the batter on it's own.
Try them...yum.